Guiding You To A More Magical Life

Happy Tarot Overview

Lo Sacarbeo’s Happy Tarot (2015) was a saccharine, manga feel to the overly sugar-filled cards. Yet, I must admit to having developed a fondness for it over the course of this week. I’ve had several quite profound and helpful readings from it. And although I know the power of the reading is in the reader rather than the cards, I have found it very easy to read with. Definitely a plug’n’play deck!

A large part of that is probably due to the fact that it is, for the most part, a very traditional RWS-style deck. For example, here in the Moon we have the crayfish, the deep waters it rises out of, the (extremely cute) fox and dog, the path between dark towers, and the tranquil-faced Moon. The odd lollipop growing in the landscape is really neither here nor there.

The Court cards are also quite symbolically traditional, despite the candy floss coloured hair. I like this Queen of Wands, with her cat at her feet, lions on her throne, a sunflower in one hand and a marshmallow wand in the other. The pink landscape is a little weird, but once again I like the luminosity of the image, with sunbeams blazing across the sky.

The Aces, however, are probably my least favourite cards in the pack. All of them have these peculiar, sprinkle-topped marshmallow clouds holding the suit emblem. I find these anthropomorphic candy clouds strangely disturbing, though I guess I should just see them as sweet bearers of gifts…

Finally, we have the Minors. With a few exceptions, these are also very traditional. In the Five of Swords we see our happy victor gathering their spoils. Are those chocolate swords? Still, the marshmallow cloud above looks like it plans to drop an ice lolly down to the vanquished, so perhaps things are not all bad for them, either.

One of the slight exceptions is the Eight of Swords. For some reason, which I’ll leave to your imagination, this is one of the cards I always look to in a new deck. In the Happy Tarot, the blindfolded figure is in what looks like a dried out river bed, with the swords on the banks above her head. In some ways, this makes the swords feel even less of a barrier than they normally are: she could just walk forwards or backwards along the river bed. And yet, those swords are precisely stopping her from going up, from lifting herself out of the somewhat emotional place she’s in. It’s an interesting slant on the card, different but still recognisable.

Overall, as I say, I’ve become surprisingly fond of this deck. I’m not sure I’d want to read for children with it, or give it to children, despite its child-like qualities and lack of nudity and harshness. However, that’s a personal view because I consider sugar a noxious and addictive substance. Though as Beverly of By the Sycamore Tree pointed out on Monday, this deck is so nauseatingly sweet it could turn you off sugar just looking at it 😀